Hasta La Gadget!

Leave it to Japan to come up with a firefighting robot that looks like a dragon. This is actually a very clever idea. If you are building a robot to fight fires, you might as well use the water that you are fighting fires with to propel your robot and move it around.

The Dragon firefighting robot was built by Professor Satoshi Tadokoro, and his team at Tohoku University and the National Institute of Technology. Their robot is raised by the same directional jets of water that are used to stop the fire.It also uses these jets of water to steer, moving the dragon’s head by firing water jets at different angles.

That all means that firefighters don’t have to lug the hose around themselves, and that the robot can get to the fire quickly on its own.

I’m not sure how effective this would actually be at putting out fires, but it is a cool idea. The main idea is that you would attach it to the end of a ladder or crane and let it explore a building that is on fire so that no humans have to step inside and get hurt.

[via Hackaday]

Porsche has rolled out the very cool 911 Speedster concept car. This car is meant to celebrate 70 years of Porsche sports cars. The design of the Speedster Concept is meant to pay homage to the very first Porsche 356 “No.1” Roadster. Porsche says that car received its operating permit on June 8, 1948. Porsche gave the special car a … Continue reading

There are some that say pain is all in the mind, and to a certain extent that is true. If you’ve ever been sick and focused on the pain, it feels like it is never going to end. However if you find yourself distracted, maybe friends come to visit or if you’re doing something else, the pain somehow lessens.

Hoping to perhaps reduce the amount of drugs that patients rely on for pain medication, a hospital in France has started to test out using virtual reality (VR) to manage pain. Graduate students at St Joseph’s Hospital, France have designed an immersive virtual program that aims to help patients relax and to increase pain tolerance without the need for any kind of medications.

Dr. Olivier Ganasia, head of the hospital’s ER department has likened this to hypnosis where, “(It) enables us to offer patients a technique to distract their attention and curb their pain and anxiety when being treated in the emergency room…I think in 10 years, virtual reality won’t even be a question anymore, and will be used in hospitals routinely.”

It is an interesting treatment because we have seen many cases of patients becoming dependent on painkillers, or even growing a resistance to them, which in turn would require them to take more powerful doses which seems like a never-ending cycle.

Hospital In France Uses VR As A Drug-Free Pain Management Solution , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Ever had to drive a drunk friend home? Ever had to clean up the mess that friend left on your backseat? Imagine how taxi drivers, Uber drivers, and Lyft drivers must feel having to go through that experience on a nightly basis. However it seems that Uber could be trying to take the guesswork out of the equation.

A recently published patent has revealed that Uber could be looking into developing an AI system that can tell when a passenger is drunk. This will be done through the Uber app in which based on the description of the patent, will attempt to discern unusual behavior by the way users interact with the app.

This will take into account typos, how precisely links and buttons are pressed, walking speed, and also how long it takes to request a ride. The system will also take into consideration the time of day and the location of the pickup. For example there is a lower chance of the user being intoxicated at 10am in the morning while requesting a ride from their home to the bank, versus Friday night in an area filled with pubs.

So why the need for such a system? One possible use is that if the app detects that the user could be intoxicated, it might prevent them from partaking in shared rides out of consideration to other passengers. It might also pair them with drivers who might have more experience, or maybe it could even allow drivers to reject such passengers.

However there are also problems with such a design, as noted by CNN Money. In the past few years there have been multiple instances of Uber drivers who have been reported to have sexually assault or abuse intoxicated passengers, which means that this patent basically points out passengers who are drunk which could make it easier for criminals to find their victims.

That being said this is only a patent so there’s no telling if Uber actually plans on implementing it.

Uber Could Be Creating An AI System That Can Tell When You’re Drunk , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Here’s what North Koreans are being told about the Singapore summit.